Pentagon Missing TrillionsCBS Reports Pentagon Missing $2.3 Trillion

One day before the 9/11 attacks, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made
the above astonishing admission. Besides being reported months later in the
CBS report given below, the quote is still posted on
this webpage of the
Department of Defense website.

And on
this page of the PBS website, we
learn that this figure came from a report of the Pentagon's inspector general.
"Its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of
what it spends," reports CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales.

The
timing of this admission just one day before 9/11 kept this story from even
making the news at the time. Even
when it was finally reported months later, this revelation received scant
coverage. Why has this startling news never been given top headlines in large bold
print on all of the nation's newspapers? Why to this day is our press hardly
mentioning this most vital issue?

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(CBS) On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer
to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.

He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.

"In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death," he
said.

Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed
and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have
been forgotten.

Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more
than $48 billion in new defense spending."

More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports,
while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of
what it spends.

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions,"
Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion – that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America.
To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case
of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300
million.

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said
Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

Minnery, a former Marine turned whistle-blower, is risking his job by
speaking out for the first time about the millions he noticed were missing
from one defense agency's balance sheets. Minnery tried to follow the
money trail, even crisscrossing the country looking for records.

"The director looked at me and said 'Why do you care about this stuff?'
It took me aback, you know? My supervisor asking me why I care about doing
a good job," said Minnery.

He was reassigned and says officials then covered up the problem by just
writing it off.

"They have to cover it up," he said. "That's where the corruption
comes in. They have to cover up the fact that they can't do the job."

The Pentagon's Inspector General "partially substantiated" several
of Minnery's allegations but could not prove officials tried "to manipulate
the financial statements."

Twenty years ago, Department of Defense Analyst Franklin C. Spinney made
headlines exposing what he calls the "accounting games." He's still
there, and although he does not speak for the Pentagon, he believes the problem
has gotten worse.

"Those numbers are pie in the sky. The books are cooked routinely
year after year," he said.

Another critic of Pentagon waste, Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, commanded
the Navy's 2nd Fleet the first time Donald Rumsfeld served as Defense Secretary,
in 1976.

In his opinion, "With good financial oversight we could find $48 billion
in loose change in that building, without having to hit the taxpayers."

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